The Wyvern Collection

This handsome catalogue explores a remarkable collection of medieval and Renaissance art in various media. It features stunning new photography and original research, significantly broadening the scope of the existing scholarship on the subject. The Wyvern Collection stands out as one of the world’s pre-eminent collections in private hands. Scholarly catalogues of its rich array of holdings have been published in recent years, but new, important additions continue to be made. This volume includes all the medieval and Renaissance works of art acquired since 2020\. The recent acquisitions have built on the existing strengths of the collection, while adding significant new pieces that cover a wide geographical, technical and stylistic range. Among the highlights in this volume are a striking German twelfth-century aquamanile in the form of a stag, three early-thirteenth-century Limoges enamels, a rare fourteenth-century cameo of the Virgin and Child, a fine fourteenth-century French marble canopy from a tomb, and a previously unknown enamelled knop from a processional cross made by the esteemed Italian goldsmith and painter Nicola da Guardiagrele around 1410\. Italian Renaissance ceramics are also well represented, with outstanding examples by such celebrated sixteenth-century masters as Giorgio Andreoli da Gubbio, the so-called Milan Marsyas Painter, Francesco Xanto Avelli and Orazio Fontana da Urbino. The Wyvern Collection is especially strong in the painted enamels of Renaissance Limoges, and three pieces have been added to this category, including a magnificent ewer by Pierre Reymond. There are also sculptures in stone, wood and bronze, and a beautiful early sixteenth-century stained and painted glass roundel from the Northern Netherlands that perfectly complements the roundels already in the Collection. The beautiful new photographs commissioned specially for this volume bring to light every detail of the pieces, making it possible to appreciate the technical refinement and exceptional craftsmanship of their medieval and Renaissance makers. Alongside their visual and aesthetic quality, the new additions are important documents for the history of collecting, as attested by the prestigious provenance of several of the pieces – formerly in the Adda, Cottreau, Harris, Hunt and Rothschild collections among others. Paul Williamson, the author of this, as of the previous, volumes, is acknowledged to be an outstanding expert on medieval sculpture and decorative arts.